Every year, more Australians are injured at work than on our roads.Yet we rarely talk about what happens afterwards.
Beginning in Lithgow, where a family tragedy sparked a search for answers, Shattered travels across Australia exploring the human consequences of workplace injury.
Through compelling conversations with injured workers, families, employers, doctors, lawyers and community members, the series reveals how a single injury can reshape lives, relationships and futures. Their stories offer profoundly human accounts of grief, loss, resilience and the long journey that often follows.
Filmed over three years, Shattered combines lived experience, social history and expert insight to explore the systems, institutions and decisions that shape that journey.
At its heart, the series asks a simple question:
What happens after workplace injury?
Host a Screening | Upcoming Community Screenings
Available from August 2026
Location | Event | Ticket | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
Sydney | Community Screening | Invite Only | 03/08/2026 |
Lithgow | Community Screening | Available | 06/08/2026 |
Canberra | Community Screening | Available | 16/08/2026 |
Albury | Workplace Screening | Private Event | 19/08/2026 |
Screenings are being developed for workplaces, universities, healthcare settings, faith communities and local groups.
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Reflect
Use guided questions to consider what systems do to people — and what care requires.
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Respond
Host conversations that move beyond outrage toward understanding, responsibility and change.
Why we made Shattered?
Workplace injury doesn't only affect the person who is injured.
Its effects can be felt by partners, children, parents, friends and communities.
Shattered was made to honour those experiences and to encourage a conversation about care, connection and recovery.
Because healing is rarely a solo journey.
Episode 1 - Origins of Control
Workers’ compensation was born in the industrial age — a promise of protection in exchange for risk.
In towns like Lithgow, where coal mines, railways and steelworks powered a young nation, communities carried the human cost of industrial progress.
Episode One traces how social protection evolved into a structured insurance architecture.
When protection becomes calculation, what happens to care?
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Environmental Analysis
Examine wider community and identify audiences and assumptions playing into existing narrative. Fact Check. Is it true?
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Strategic Storytelling
Facts tell, stories sell. As necessary correct the backstory with facts, evidence and stories.
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Show New Story
People are wired for stories. Use memes, images, metaphors and channels of communication that resonate with audience. Keep it human and authentic.
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Journey With New Story
It takes time to change a dysfunctional story. Stay the course. Measure and adjust. Build collaborative partnerships of care to embed new story.
Our Framework
We are currently fact checking a number of ambiguous and inconsistent issues that we have identified across other platforms to clarify. Accordingly, this website will be updated on a regular basis so please check back. If you have information that you would like us to consider, please use the contact page and we will be in touch. We appreciate your time.
Evidence-Informed. Non-Partisan.
Shattered is an independent documentary grounded in social history, parliamentary material, and regulatory records.
It is not aligned with any political party or institution.
Its purpose is clarity — and to simplify the complex for others to understand.
#shattereddoco
Episode 1 - 100 Years On
A century after the promise of protection was formalised, workers’ compensation has become increasingly complex.
Claims systems, impairment thresholds, financial pressures, administrative triage and digital platforms now shape how injury is recognised, managed and disputed.
For families, it can feel bewildering.
For employers, opaque.
For injured workers, destabilising.
Shattered asks whether system design still serves recovery — or whether the architecture itself now requires examination.
